Contents

Synopsis

Castiel and Uriel appear and demand that Sam and Dean hand over Anna, with Castiel announcing, "We're here for Anna... she has to die." Uriel states that Anna is not as innocent as she appears. The boys protest but the angels attack. Suddenly a bright light engulfs them and the angels are repelled and disappear. The boys go to the room where Anna was hiding, and find that she has used her blood to draw angel banishing sigils on a mirror and use some spell against the angels.

Sam, Dean, Ruby and Anna take refuge at Bobby's place, although Bobby is away on a job in the Caribbean, putting Anna in Bobby's panic room.

Sam discovers that when Anna was a child, she claimed she had another father, who was mad at her. She claims to remember nothing of this, so Dean brings Pamela Barnes to try and unlock her memories. Anna remembers, and reveals that she is an angel who chose to fall to Earth and become human, relinquishing her grace.

Sam tracks Anna's grace, which was mistaken for a meteor when she fell, to Kentucky, where an oak tree grew on the place where it landed. Sam, Dean, Ruby and Anna travel there only to find it gone. Anna then overhears the angels talking. She reports that if she is not handed over to them, Dean will be returned to Hell. Later, Anna tells Dean she knows what he did in Hell, and that he should forgive himself. She kisses him, and they make love in the back of the Impala.

Ruby goes to a crossroads and reveals herself to Alastair. She offers to give up Anna, if Alastair will let her and the Winchesters go. He captures and tortures her with her knife. She won't reveal Anna's location verbally, but she will take him there.

Uriel appears to Dean in a dream, taunting him, and reveals that he holds Anna's grace in a necklace. He demands Anna, saying he knows Dean's weak spot, and offers him a choice.

Uriel and Castiel appear to take Anna. Dean's choice is revealed: either Anna dies - or Sam. As the angels are about to take her, an injured Ruby appears with Alastair. The demons and angels confront each other and another fight ensues, during which Anna steals her Grace from Uriel and becomes an angel again. During the process, Alastair disappears. Uriel and Castiel leave, and we find out that it was Sam's plan all along to bring the demons and angels together to get them to fight each other.

On the side of the road, Dean and Sam have a beer and Dean starts to talk about his time in Hell. He reveals that the time was more like forty years than four months and that he underwent excruciating torture, and that each day, Alastair would offer to let him off the rack, if Dean would become the torturer himself. Dean weeps as he admits to Sam that after 30 years, he broke and took up tormenting other souls.

Anna: I was stationed on earth 2,000 years. Just... watching... silent... invisible... out on the road... sick for home... waiting on orders from an unknowable father I can't begin to understand. So don't tell me that --

[Dean laughs]Anna: What is so funny? What?

Dean: Nothing. Sorry. It's just... I can relate.

Alastair: You know the problem with your generation? Instant gratification. It's all now, now, now. No patience, no craftsmanship. But I do have to say... This knife of yours... It's an exquisite piece. You must tell me where you found it. You know... I haven't been up here since Poland '43. Truth is, I loathe it. It's chilly. No stink of blood or sizzle of flesh or the wet flap of flayed skin. I don't know how you stand it. So, the sooner you cooperate, the sooner I can finish up with this ghastly angel business and return home to my studies. But no rush. Let's take our time... Relish the moment. Now, I'm going to remove this, but don't you go smoking out of that meat. You won't get very far.

Dean: It wasn't four months, you know.

Sam: What?Dean: It was four months up here, but down there... I don't know. Time's different. It was more like 40 years.Sam: My God.Dean: They, uh... They sliced and carved and tore at me in ways that you... Until there was nothing left. And then, suddenly... I would be whole again... like magic... just so they could start in all over. And Alastair... at the end of every day... every one... he would come over. And he would make me an offer. To take me off the rack... if I put souls on... if I started the torturing. And every day, I told him to stick it where the sun shines. For 30 years, I told him. But then I couldn't do it anymore, Sammy. I couldn't. And I got off that rack. God help me, I got right off it, and I started ripping them apart. I lost count of how many souls. The -- the things that I did to them.Sam: Dean... Dean, look, you held out for 30 years. That's longer than anyone would have.

Dean: How I feel... This... inside me... I wish I couldn't feel anything, Sammy. I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing.

Dean: Uh, the Dominican. He said we break anything, we buy it.Sam: He's working a job?Dean: God, I hope so. Otherwise he's at Hedonism in a banana hammock and a trucker cap.Sam: Now that's seared in my brain.

Hedonism is the name of a resort chain in the Caribbean which, as the name suggests, have a focus on partying and sex.

Anna: My mother, Amy, couldn't get pregnant. Always called me her little miracle. She had no idea how right she was.

Dean: So, you just forgot that you were God's little Power Ranger?

Power Rangers are superheroes who are featured in a number of children's TV series.

Anna: Ruby's right. Heaven wants me dead.

Ruby: And Hell just wants her. A flesh-and-blood angel that you can question, torture, that bleeds. Sister, you're the Stanley Cup. And sooner or later, Heaven or Hell, they're gonna find you.

Ruby: Not this time. You do not want to get between these two armies. It's Godzilla and Mothra. If one side doesn't get us, the other one will.

Mothra and Godzilla featured in a series of Japanese movies in the '50s and '60s. Godzilla was a mutant giant dinosaur who gets super powers from a nuclear blast, and Mothra, a giant moth, was enlisted by people to fight him. The foes met again in the Millenium series (1999-2004) movie called Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.

In 1.15 The Benders, Sam and Dean interview a boy who witnesses a strange disappearance and he says at the time he was watching Godzilla versus Mothra, and Dean says it's his favorite.

[Dean chuckles]

Ruby: What?Dean: Nothing. It's just an angel and a demon, riding in the back seat. It's like the setup to a bad joke. Or a Penthouse Forum letter.Sam: Dude, reality... porn.Dean: You call this reality?

Penthouse Forum features letters of unlikely sexual encounters that invariably begin "I never thought this would happen to me…"

The image of the hand streaking down the foggy car window is reminiscent of the scene from Titanic when Jack and Rose are having sex. Coincidentally, Jensen once did an ad for Titanic-related merchandise. And doesn't that look a bit like the necklace Uriel had with Anna's grace? Full Titanic references.

Minutiae

There is a discrepancy as to when Anna was born: on the Patient History form Sam looks at, it says that Anna's D.O.B. is April 13, 1985. However, later in the episode Sam says, In March '85, a meteorite vanished in the night sky over northwestern Ohio. It was sighted nine months before Anna was born and she was born in that part of Ohio, which would put her birthday in December of 1985.